Computer Games Illegal in Greece!

I can’t believe a law like this will remain in effect for very long. But it sure is a wild one. Almost like a scene out of that Kevin Bacon movie, Footloose:

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Use a Game Boy in Greece, go to jail

Ban on electronic games applies to everyone, even tourists

By Matt Loney – MSNBC

Sept. 3 — In Greece, playing a shoot-’em up video game could land you in jail. The government there has banned all electronic games across the country, including those that run on home computers, on Game Boy-style portable consoles, and on mobile phones. Thousands of tourists in Greece are unknowingly facing heavy fines or long terms in prison for owning mobile phones or portable video games.

GREEK LAW NUMBER 3037, enacted at the end of July, explicitly forbids electronic games with ‘electronic mechanisms and software’ from public and private places, and people have already been fined tens of thousands of dollars for playing or owning games.

The law applies equally to visitors from abroad: “If you know these things are banned, you should not bring them in,” said a commercial attaché at the Greek Embassy in London, who declined to give her name. Internet cafes will be allowed to continue to operate, providing no games-playing takes place. If a customer is found to be running any sort of game, including online chess, the café owner will be fined and the place closed.

Douglas Rushkoff is the author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity, as well as a dozen other bestselling books on media, technology, and culture, including Present Shock, Program or Be Programmed, Media Virus, Life Inc and the novel Ecstasy Club. He is Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at CUNY/Queens. He wrote the graphic novels Aleister & Adolf, Testament, and A.D.D., and made the television documentaries Generation Like, Merchants of Cool, The Persuaders, and Digital Nation. He lives in New York, and lectures about media, society, and economics around the world.